Humanities Award
10/21/2009 4:34:31 PM
The Award for Distinguished Service to the Humanities is given to recognize individuals who have made significant contributions in the field of the humanities. The award includes a cash prize and a medal named for Mr. and Mrs. William B. Jaffe, whose gift of $25,000 enabled the Society to create the award in 1970. Mr. Jaffe was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Union College.
Recipients of the award are usually honored during the banquet at the triennial meetings of the Council of Phi Beta Kappa.
Previous winners include:
| 2009 |
Douglas Greenberg, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University (To read Greenberg's acceptance address from the 42nd Triennial Council click here.) |
| 2006 |
Gerald Early, Merle Kling Professor of Letters and Director of the Center for Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis |
| 2003 |
Robert Pinsky, professor of English and creative writing at Boston University and former Poet Laureate of the United States |
| 2000 |
Richard Franke, chairman and founder of the Chicago Humanities Festival and CEO of The John Nuveen Company |
| 1997 |
Joseph Epstein, renowned essayist and former editor of The American Scholar |
| 1990 |
John E. Sawyer, former president of the John Mellon Foundation, and Congressman Sidney Yates |
| 1988 |
Daniel J. Boorstin, retired Librarian of Congress |
| 1985 |
Robert M. Lumiansky, past president of both the American Council of Learned Societies and Phi Beta Kappa |
| 1982 |
Dumas Malone, the distinguished Jefferson scholar and Jefferson Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia |
| 1979 |
The National Humanities Center in memory of Charles Frankel, the teacher and philosopher who helped found the Center and served as its first director |
| 1976 |
Louis B. Wright, former director of the Folger Shakespeare Library |
| 1973 |
Howard Mumford Jones, Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor for the Humanities at Harvard University |
| 1970 |
Barnaby C. Keeney, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and former president of Brown University |